


It's A Beautiful Night; Looking For Something Dumb To Do

by shewhoguards



Category: The Chronicles of Chrestomanci - Diana Wynne Jones
Genre: Arguments, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-21
Updated: 2016-09-21
Packaged: 2018-08-16 12:14:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8102026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shewhoguards/pseuds/shewhoguards
Summary: Christopher wants to marry Millie. Gabriel doesn't believe it to be a good idea.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [youtomyme](https://archiveofourown.org/users/youtomyme/gifts).



“I want to marry Millie.”

“Absolutely not,” Gabriel said firmly, and watched with a complete lack of surprise as the young man in front of him swelled with indignation.

“How dare—I only asked you to be polite anyway!” Christopher said, the respectful tone dropping away in an instant. “You’re not her father; you can’t make that decision!”

“No, but I am her guardian,” Gabriel said, as calm as though they were discussing what to have to dinner that evening. There had been enough years by now for him to have grown well-used to dealing with Christopher’s tantrums without turning a hair. “And yours for that matter. I owe it to you both to make the best decisions for you I can, and I would be remiss if I gave my permission to do something that would be bad for you.”

“How could it possibly be bad for me?” Christopher demanded. “I love Millie! I’ve wanted to marry her since—since always!”

“Since always?” Gabriel asked mildly. “Or since you realised that when you both grew up she would leave the Castle and you would have to stay here?” He looked at Christopher, not unsympathetic to the young man’s plight. He too had once been young, had once loved someone – too much to keep them at the castle. “Millie is an enchanter in her own right. She could achieve great things. Would you really reduce her to being no more than Chrestomanci’s wife for the rest of her life?”

Christopher had been ready for the kind of shouting fit that, in his younger days, had frequently ended in walls falling down and roofs lifting into the air as angry magic flew out of control. That comment abruptly cooled rage to... well, to sulkiness if not as far as reasonableness. “She _wants_ to marry me,” he insisted. “I’m not forcing her.”

“And until now she’s been at a girl’s boarding school, before which she was a goddess,” Gabriel pointed out. “Really, I expected this of either you or Conrad; it was always going to be one or the other. You’ve all been living too closely to have any kind of reasonable view of what other choices your lives have.”

He should have thought harder, should really have considered those words before they had left his mouth. “And what other choices do _I_ have?” Christopher said, his voice rising again, his tone angry and mocking. “Oh no, I forgot, I’m the exception. I don’t get any choice. I just have to stay at the castle and do what you want for the rest of my life. It’s everyone else who gets to leave!”

“And do you really want to hold Millie here with you for no other reason than you don’t want her to leave too?” Gabriel demanded, raising his own voice now. “And I dare say if there was any way you could marry Conrad at the same time you’d be in my office, pleading a case for that. People aren’t toys, Christopher. You can’t hoard them just because you don’t want to let them go. I understand it’s hard now that you’re older and realising that they won’t stay at the Castle but you have to realise..”

“You have to realise I love Millie!” Christopher shouted over him furiously. “And she loves me! And I’m going to marry her even if we have to run away to another Series where no-one knows who I am to do it! I hate being Chrestomanci!”

The door slamming was dramatic enough. Gabriel’s office wall falling down might have been more so had he not, out of long and weary experience, anticipated it and thrown up a spell to hold it in place. He stared into space for a moment, and sighed. Sure as he was that he was right, that could certainly have gone better.


End file.
